[Info-vax] Anyone interested in another public access system

[Richard B. Gilbert]

Bob Eager wrote:
> On Tue, 14 Apr 2009 16:30:13 UTC, billg999 at cs.uofs.edu (Bill Gunshannon)
> wrote:
> 
>> In article <176uZD2KcidF-pn2-KUhwpuvoZjLb at rikki.tavi.co.uk>,
>> 	"Bob Eager" <rde42 at spamcop.net> writes:
>>> On Tue, 14 Apr 2009 15:22:48 UTC, billg999 at cs.uofs.edu (Bill Gunshannon)
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Note the percentage of fragmentation.  And, no, there are no de-frag
>>>> programs for BSD Unix.  The question does come up from a windows weenie
>>>> periodically in the BSD Newsgroups.
>>> Remind me when DEC finally provided a defragmenter for VMS...! :-)
>> Don't know that they do.  Does the VMS filesystem fragment enough that
>> it is necessary?
> 
> Hollow laugh. Oh yes. Not to mention the dreaded (old) INDEXF.SYS 
> filling up.
> 
>>  I have heard of people basicly "unloading" all of the
>> VMS files to tape and reloading them to rmeove fragmentation, but I
>> don't know that it is ever really necessary.
> 
> It was more necessary on VMS than on any other system I've come into 
> contact with, mainly due to the fact that fragmentation ate file headers
> and thus cost real disk space.
> 
> But I could live with it because it was so reliable...

Hey, when you come out of the dark ages, as I do, it's a miracle of 
modern technology.  You learn to live with the quirks and problems 
because it's so much better than it was a few years ago.  I can remember 
when a 5 MB hard disk, 2.5MB fixed and 2.5MB removable, weighed more 
than I do!

It was only a couple of years later that our secretary's PC was equipped 
with a 5-1/4 inch 5MB disk.

Now I can carry a few terabytes around with me.  A couple of times a 
year, I tell my PC to defrag its disk, go to bed and stack Z's for a few 
hours and it's done.